Best Recurring Foodie Event

One Fermented Evening

The East Bay is awash in paired dinners, supper clubs, and sundry other food- and drink-centric activities, but all too often, they tend to be didactic, decorous affairs — not to mention prohibitively expensive and disappointingly minimal on the portions front. Not so much with One Fermented Evening, a more-or-less monthly beer-pairing event put on by Terrace Room chef Devon Boisen in conjunction with local and local-ish beer companies like Anchor Steam, Bison, and Sierra Nevada. Here, the foodie-fetishism is kept to a welcome minimum, the brewers sit at communal tables with the diners, and, for the two or three hours that can encompass these long, languorous dinners, everyone's a friend. Best of all: Over five courses, you get as many brimming glasses of beer (no sample sizes here, thanks) and enough food to feed easily two or three people (Boisen has taken to warning people at the beginning of each meal that they'll be leaving with at least one takeout container and he is most definitely not lying) — all with white-tablecloth-style service, plus a stunning view of Lake Merritt. Come hungry (and sober).